Heat guard Dwyane Wade is not thinking about taking games off during season to preserve his body

Dwyane Wade was back on the court today and he was the last one to leave practice after working tirelessly on his post game.

Wade, who opted to sit out Monday’s preseason opener, has had two hard work days surrounding that game.
“You want to play in some games to get that rhythm,” Wade said. “We got seven of them left. There is plenty of time.”

Coach Erik Spoelstra and Wade were asked about in-season preservation for Wade – taking off the second game of a back-to-back or the fourth of a four-in-five – but neither said they have looked that far ahead.

“It doesn’t (enter) my mind I’m going to leave it to the coaches,” Wade said. “It’s a long season but you don’t want to come in thinking I’m going to half-ass it at all. You want to go in thinking when you’re on the floor, however many minutes you play. you want to give it what you have.

“We’re not that much better than other teams where we can preserve and sit guys. This is not the way we do things.”

Wade spent part of the summer recovering from the bone bruise in his right knee that limited him during the final month of the regular season and throughout the playoffs and part of it conditioning. He believes he is healthier than he has been in many years.

Wade expects to play Thursday in Detroit.

Even without Wade, the Heat’s core players looked sharp offensively in their 92-87 win over Atlanta Monday, a game in which the Heat built a 22 point lead with the regulars in the game.

Spoelstra said that should be the case after “10,000 hours” of work and repetition.

“Always with this group we have to spend a lot of time offensively with our spacing and the pace of doing things,” Spoelstra said. “We can’t take it for granted because when we don’t get to our spots and we don’t do it with energy it can look pretty ugly, very quickly.”